


Fate Takes a Break

by Ally147



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:07:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23622055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ally147/pseuds/Ally147
Summary: This date isn’t quite as blind as Katniss was expecting.
Relationships: Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark
Comments: 10
Kudos: 161
Collections: Everlark Fic Exchange - Springtime 2020





	Fate Takes a Break

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2020 round of Everlark Fic Exchange, prompt #50: everlark discovering on their date that they’ve missed each other their whole lives (living in the same city, went to the same high school, going to the same halloween and nye parties, were set up before by different friends but stood each other up, shopping at the same store, etc.)

This date isn’t quite as blind as Katniss was expecting.

Still a little bit blind, though. She’s seen the guy before, she’s sure of that. But where? The weird furrowed brow look he’s sending her every time she dips her gaze towards her plate to pick out another choice sliver of cheese-herb-sauced chicken breast tells her he’s got the same weird deja vu thing going on, too.

She sighs and asks, “It’s not just me, is it?”

The guy — Peeta, she tells herself again, somehow not as distinctive a name as it sounds like it should be — huffs a quiet laugh and sets his fork down.

“Maybe we’ve just got those kinds of faces?”

“You might be right. But I’m not convinced.”

He smiles, a beyond-charming quirk of his lips. “No, neither am I. I think I would remember you if I’d seen you before.”

She blushes, just a little, and takes a sip of water. “Well, it’s our first date,” she points out. “Might as well do the twenty questions thing now.”

“And, what, deprive us of a perfectly good second date activity?”

“This will drive me insane if we don’t work it out right now.”

He drums his fingers along the edge of their table. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you not immediately pass up a second date.”

She runs her hands — nowhere near as damp now as they were at the beginning of the date — along the smooth satin of her skirt. “I could be tempted, I suppose.”

“Hmm. Noted.” He smiles that charming little smile again and leans forward, close enough that she can make out the hints of gold flecked like tiny bursts of sunshine in his blue eyes. “Where do you want to start?”

“Well,” she takes another bite of chicken before she says anything weird about his eyes that she might regret, “you’re obviously not from District Twelve, so —”

Peeta coughs. “Actually, I am.”

There’s a beat of odd silence where they do nothing but blink at each other.

“District Twelve,” she repeats, slower, like there’s a chance he misheard her. “As in, tiny ass coal town about two hours south of here?”

He quirks his brow. “Is there another District Twelve I should know about?”

She narrows her eyes. “Merchant or Seam?”

“Merchant, but I went to D12 Senior High. That was in the middle of Seam, right?”

“Bullshit,” she exclaims, maybe a little too loudly if the dirty looks she’s getting from the snooty old people at their neighbouring tables is anything to go by. “I’d remember if you were there. When did you graduate?”

“Uh, 2008?”

“ _Bullshit_ ,” she says again, because this can’t be real, can it? “Same year as me. You weren’t there.”

He grins again. “I’m glad we can establish that neither of us remember each other from high school, so strike one for that, but I wasn’t there for all of it. Just… I don’t know, maybe the last three months of the semester? Didn’t seem all that worth going to graduation after not really having contributed anything. Then I got accepted to Capitol University, and —”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she cuts in with a chuckle. “Capitol University. When did you start?”

“Pretty much right away.”

She leans forward, eyes narrowed. “Major?”

He mirrors her. “Double, actually, Business and Arts. You?”

“Environmental Biology. But I had a friend doing economics, so I was around the business school a lot.”

“What was their name?”

She takes the last bite of her chicken and pushes her plate away. “Madge.”

He chuckles. “Don’t tell me, Madge Undersee, right?”

“Uh…”

“She dated my roommate for about a year.”

“You were Thom’s roommate?”

“Sure was. For a little while after we graduated, too. Last I heard, he moved to District Two. Something to do with gem mining.”

“Hang on, are you the Peter — or, Peeta, I guess — that she and Thom tried to set me up with for, what was it… a double bowling date?”

He laughs, a boundless, joyful sound that pools warm in her belly. “I’m guessing you’re Kat with the lethal aim, then?”

“The lethal aim has more to do with archery. Did you have fun that night?”

“I got stood up, if you’ll recall?” His eyes glitter in the gentle candlelight. “Did you really have food poisoning?”

She blushes again, but she’s not sure why she’s so embarrassed. “No. I just… completely hate bowling.”

“Guess a second date down at the alley is completely out of the question, then?”

“I’d probably dredge up the food poisoning excuse again if you tried it.”

“Also noted.”

They share a smile, one that almost frightens her with the length and breadth of how it speaks of their possible future.

She coughs into her closed fist and dabs at her lips with a napkin. “Well, next thing, I guess you’re gonna tell me you were at all the music nights at the campus tavern.”

“Every Friday, if I didn’t have something due that night. Why?”

“I was in a band that played there about once a month. Drummer.”

“You behind a kit would have been a sight. What was your band’s name?”

“Victors.”

He shakes his head. “Funny. My best friend married your keyboard player.”

Her jaw drops. “You’re best friends with Finnick?”

“We went to the same elementary school. Been friends for years now.”

“He’s kind of a dick.”

Peeta bursts out laughing again. “Yeah, he kind of is.”

“Spend much time around the campus gym, then?”

“I was there on a wrestling scholarship,” he tells her, and the subtle flex of his muscles beneath the deep midnight of his suit jacket catches her attention in a way it didn’t before. “I assume you did the rounds there, too, then?”

She sighs and finishes her water. “Track Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.”

“Hate to say it, but I don’t think our paths crossed there, either.”

“No, but I did go to a few wrestling meets. My roommate enjoyed them.”

He grins again. “Guys in tight spandex, huh?”

She snorts. “Don’t ask me. I barely looked up from my phone.”

“Glad my meets provided such riveting entertainment.”

“I was literally the only one not paying attention.”

“Probably a good thing I didn’t know you were there,” he muses as he takes another sip of wine. A drop clings to the edge of his lips, and the dart of his tongue to catch it is entrancing. “I might not have placed otherwise.”

She clears her throat. “We were way up in the nosebleeds, so there was probably no danger of me distracting you. This is all kind of uncanny, though. I could know you from anywhere.”

He smiles again, a rogue curl flopping forward over his eyes. “Sort of romantic, don’t you think?”

She snorts. “That we constantly missed each other over the years? Kind of sounds like the opposite of a fairy tale.”

“Oh, I don’t know. We’re here now. Maybe the universe thinks we’re inevitable or something? Soulmates destined to be brought together. Maybe that’s why we’re familiar to each other, we were together in a past life or something.”

Her answering laugh is more like a snort. “Or maybe fate took a break, and this is some sort of cosmic screw-up that slipped through the cracks and is bound to fail.”

“Katniss,” he says, the playful glint in his eyes simmering down to something more serious, and strangely earnest. He reaches across the table, just barely grazing his pinkie against hers. It’d be dumb to say a thrum of lightning coursed through her at the touch, so she’ll just keep that thought to herself.

“If I’d seen you or, more to the point, noticed you then, during any one of those times our paths could have crossed but didn’t, any one of those times we were in the same room but I looked left and you looked right… believe me, I would have let you know, and I wouldn’t have let you go.”

“Well,” she says after a long moment, just staring at his finger beside hers, “good thing we’re meeting up now, then, isn’t it?”

That same hundred-year smile passes between them, maybe not quite as scary as it was before. “Yeah, it is.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm ally147writes on Tumblr if you ever want to badger me :)


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